Yvgenie (38 page)

For fear of spells, her mother had said, spells which might
f
i
n
d
her even in the safety of her own house, in her bed at
night. Who knew what mistakes the other Yurishevs h
ad
made or what careless moment had killed them?

But one had only to look at Pyetr Kochevikov to know what her mother had really feared, the whisper that wou
ld
mean she was not Yurishev's heir, the whisper that wou
ld
simply say:
Kochevikov's
eyes,
Kochevikov's
face,
Kochevi
kov's
likeness. Her true father's hair was even paler than h
er
mother's, of which she was so
vain; he was incredibly hand
some even years away from the event, and far, far youn
ger
than she would have ever expected, even so—all of which suggested an entirely different account of what had passed
on
her soon-to-be-widowed mother's bedroom that night.

Her mother
had
to have known the truth from the day s
he
was born. Her uncles must have seen it: anyone in Vojvo
da
must have seen it, if they had ever laid eyes on her real
fa
ther—and now she knew why her uncles had never allow
ed
her outside her garden, nev
er allowed her to meet any chil
dren except her nearly grown cousins, never let her see the world except secretly, over the garden walls, never let h
er
speak to anyone but the trusted servants who lived within
the
house—and except Yvgenie and Yvgenie's father's men,
for
a few bewildering hours when they had made the betrothal, and drunk a great deal, and for those few hours made t
he
whole house echo to voices and to strangers' laughter. She had spent her whole life afraid of spells in her drink and in her food, spells on her doorway and on the steps she walked. She had expected assassins and wizards every day of her life, and
dammit,
her uncles had surely known all along who she was and whose she was:
that
was what she could not stop thinking, clinging as she must to her father's waist, jolted and tossed on the way to finding a husband she had never had: They knew. They knew all along and they lied.

Her new-found father frightened her: she was sure he used the sword he wore on bandits and trespassers in this woods
—
she earnestly hoped, on no one else. But when he had seized her hands in his, looked her straight in the eye and told her his side of things, everything he had said made clearer sense
than she had ever seen or heard out of her uncles or
her m
other; and as for Sasha—Sasha looked nothing like the
dreadful
wizards of her imagining, either, except the books
he carri
ed. She had seen no skulls, no dreadful ravenous
creatu
res, unless one counted the sullen-looking furball that
sudde
nly turned up beside the horses, or, when they stopped
to catch
their breaths and got down, popped up in one blink
on the
black horse's rump, tugging at the pack with hands
like a
man's, looking askance at her with eyes round and gold
as the
moon.

Pye
tr said,
‘
Vodka, yes,
’
got the vodka
jug and poured
the cr
eature a drink in mid-air.

On
e never expected to see a dvorovoi with one's own eyes,
since
she had never seen one in her garden. Sasha lived se
ques
tered in the woods? She had no idea of the world except
her
nurse's tales about talking birds and lost tsarinas and horrid wizards with long white hair and long fingernails. She
had
never ridden a horse before, she had never spent a night u
nd
er the stars, she had never waded a brook or clung des
pera
tely to a branch to save herself from drowning—and now had done all of that, fallen asleep on the bare ground
night
after night and waked up one morning face to face with
her t
rue father—like the tsarevitch in her nurse's story. And
of w
izards—one never expected one who taking a pot of salve from his pack, spent his rest like her father, rubbing down
his
horse's legs and talking to the creature in fond and wor
ri
ed tones, more kindly than she generally heard people speak to other people. Sasha's hair was brown, his very nice nose was sunburned and she found herself recalling how, waking
thi
s morning he had looked as startled as she was. Besides, he had said please. Would a wizard who laid spells on people's doorways an
d
winecups beg anyone's pardon? Her un
c
les scarcely would. Only Yvgenie—Yvgenie who had met her a moment by the stairs—

Yvgenie who had shyly met her behind the stairs while their elders were talking and promised her Kiev and all the world—Yvgenie who had said—

Her father nudged her arm, offering her a kind of grain cake from their packs, all wrapped in sticky leaves. He had his own mouth full. He insisted with a second offering
and
she took the cake doubtfully and bit into it.

Honey. Grain and currants. It was the best sweet she
had
ever tasted in her life, with her hands all over dirt and
th
e tart musty leaf sticking to the honey. Her father went on
to
hand one to Sasha, who after washing his hands in the spring was wiping them on his breeches. Sasha took it and mad
e
one mouthful of it while he was putting the salve back in the packs and preparing to get back on his
horse, all of a rush as
everything had gone. Her father took up the black hors
e’s
reins, swung up in one sudden move and reached down u hand for her, while all she could think, trying to swallow down the sweet in a mouthful to free her hands, was how dreadfully it was going to hurt.

He looked her in the face, looked over her head at Sasha and said,
‘
God, she's sore as hell, Sasha, can you do something?
’

Her face must have gone absolutely, devastatingly red, when something odd happened, and the soreness went away. Like that. She glanced at Sasha, who looked elsewhere,
and
looked her father in the face, her heart pounding.

‘
Magic,
’
he said, and whisked her up by an arm and
left
her nothing to do but to catch hold of him and the saddle
and
him again, trying desperately to get her skirts arranged while the horse was starting to move.

Her whole life seemed suddenly caught up and sped alon
g
faster than she could sort out the images. Nothing was true but the things everyone had said were false, her father
just
had embarrassed her beyond bearing and yet known exactly what was wrong with her, and cared, more than that, cared for someone he had no time for, in his care for his other daughter—

In her life she had been nothing
but
convenient to everyone around her, when they had talked about Yvgenie's father, and her wedding, and how she was going to bring the whole
fa
mily to court at Kiev, and she was to remember how to
men
tion this uncle to Yvgenie's father, and that uncle
—

She felt cold, thinking:
They
needed me, god, yes, they
did
.

She remembered one summer climbing up the stack of old
boa
rds by the garden shed, and up and up the last scary bit
to the
forbidden crest of th
e garden wall, where she could loo
k out on the lane behind the house.

There was a girl who walked by sometimes, with heavy
ba
skets. One supposed she wa
s a
servant. But she sang as
sh
e went. And the richest girl in Vojvoda had used to wish
sh
e were that girl, able to wander the town with no fear of wizards and murderers.

Fool! her mother had cried, when a cousin caught her at
it and
told. You fool! Don't you understand anything?

Now she did. God, now she most certainly did.

Bi
elitsa lagged further and further behind, and Ilyana reined Patches around and rode back along the hill, seeing Yvgenie had gotten down and walked away from Bielitsa—on private business, she supposed. She got down from Patches and waited for him, taking the chanc
e to adjust the girth that had b
een slipping the last while.

But something was wrong. It might be her mother wishing a
t
them. It was coldness, it was demand, and need, and all
th
ose things she had felt lifelong from her mother
—

Then she thought, with a chill, No, not mother—it's him. It's
him,
the same as my mother feels, sometimes—

She wanted immediately to know where he was, got a worse and worse feeling, and walked after him, leaving Bielitsa and Patches to stand.

She found him
sitting on the hillside, on a carpet of old leaves, looking out at a hillside no different than this one. She walked up to him and he said, still gazing elsewhere:
‘
I need to rest. Please. Just let me rest a while.
’

She wished him well, then, but he made a furious gesture.
‘
There's nothing left, Ilyana.
’
He put a hand over his eyes
and wanted something, but there seemed a wall between them, and a wall ahead, and a weakening of her own wishes that made her feel as if—as if her mother were wanting her again, calling her away from the river shore.

Ilyana, Ilyana, come home now—

And if she gave up and came home supper would be waiting on the table again and Babi would be there and Patches and Volkhi and Missy in the pen. Papa and uncle would be there safe and sound and no one would be angry with her.

She rubbed her eyes and thought
no.
It was a trick and
a
trap, and it would not be that way again, it never could be. She was not the child she had been and she could not go back and live as if nothing had happened. But she missed her father and her uncle, and worried about them, of a sudden
;
and caught a muddled unhappiness, a sense of secrets and thing
s out of place in the world…

That was definitely her uncle, she thought: uncle was upset and thinking about her: uncle could feel that secretive and confused at once. She wanted him not to be distressed about her, she had achieved that much of calm. She said to him, Uncle, don't follow me any further. Please argue with mother. I'm all right, Yvgenie and I are all right, if you'll only not push us any more. This isn't a good time. He's so tired, uncle. We're all so tired, please don't chase us any more—please don't let mother chase us.

—Uncle, I'm so scared…

The mouse was
there
for a moment, clear as if she were standing next to him, and Sasha said,
‘
Mouse?
’
without even thinking—and felt an exhaustion and an anxiousness that turned his blood cold.

What you're feeling is dangerous, mouse, it's terribly dangerous, please listen to me. Stop and wait for us. We won't hurt you or him
…

But she caught some hint of wrongness, and fled him, then, wary and elusive as her namesake.
Eveshka
was walking near the river, he knew of a sudden, Eveshka was vastly
upse
t, thoughts darting this way toward them and that way toward the mouse, violent and demanding—

No! he wished her, as Pyetr, riding beside him, said,
‘
Sa
sha
? Can you hear her? Can you make her listen?
’

He was shaking of a sudden. He remembered that feeling,
h
e remembered all too clearly, nearly twenty years ago, a wanting so nearly absolute—

Rusalka.
That
was the way it felt.